Hot Trap
by Rain Mitchell
Summary: Pre MiniSeries. Cally and the Deck Crew go on a Pubcrawl on Picon without the Chief.


"Wahooo!" She screamed, waving her arms above her head sloshing her beer out of the glass. She wasn't quite used to drinking yet, there wasn't much chance. They'd gotten a furlough though; the whole Deck Crew had ventured out on what PO Reibek called a DrunkEx. It was her first time off the ship drinking with her shipmates.

Reibek, one of the electronics techs that she looked up to was now dancing on the bar, half of his uniform off. She hadn't really noticed his pecks before, well, she had, but hadn't. Maybe it was the beer.

"Take it all off!" Cally heard herself scream. Then covered her hand with her mouth and degraded into a fit of giggles. They'd been to three, or was it four bars now, all regular fleet bars on Picon. This was by far the best though. Maybe all of the beer that the rest of the crew had bought her just made this latest stop seem like the best. It was hard to tell.

"Hey Reibek! How about a wager?" It was some pilot. Cally thought he looked familiar, but she could place his fuzzy face. He was out of uniform anyway. You could tell though. You could always spot military in civilian clothes. They wore the most Gods awful prints from Tauron. She frowned. She wanted to see Reibek's butt in all it's glory somewhere that she could appreciate it rather than pretending she didn't notice.

"Who's that?" Reibek asked.

"Athenos. You up for the hot trap?" the pilot shouted.

"Hell yes!" Reibek said jumping down from the bar.

"What's the hot trap?" Cally asked specialist Serevens. Serevens was something of Cally's chaperone, making sure she stayed out of trouble on her first time out. It was hard to tell who was drunker at this point though.

"Oooooo... this you gotta see!" Serevens said, grabbing Cally's sleeve and pulling her towards the back room.

The concept was easy. There was a EVA harness mounted to a wire that spanned the length of the long narrow back room. The co-conspirators put you in the harness, gave you a mag-boot and launched you down the wire at one of the metal tables at the far end of the room. The idea was to plant the boot on the table and stop your motion before you crashed into the mesh web at the end of the room.

It took a few times down before Cally understood all of this. The first pilot down the line lost his grip on the boot and crashed into the mesh. For that he had to take a shot of something called Tekin's. Cally had never heard of it, but Serevens seemed to think it was something worth drinking.

"Go Reibek!" She screamed as they hooked her newfound object of lust, still missing his shirt, into the harness.

"Viper 685, short final, call the ball!" The pilot holding Reibek's foot yelled. An old Chief that Cally didn't quite know sat at the far end of the room with a green flashlight. He turned it on and pointed it at Reibek.

"Roger Ball!" Reibek yelled over the crowd. The pilot flung Reibek down the line, he screamed, dropped the boot well short of the table and ended up in the mesh.

"Ouch, High, Overspeed, missed mag lock. Bad Pass!" The firing/LSO pilot yelled. Reibek wobbled a bit getting up from the mesh. Cally giggled. This was all so insane.

"Score stands at 2-2, Pilots, Knuckledraggers. Who's next?" The LSO asked.

"Cally!" Reibek yelled, staggering back.

"What?" Cally shrieked.

"Come on! Youf got to defend the honor of the Deck Monkies!" Reibek yelled.

"Cally! Cally! Cally!" The crowd started chanting. Did the crowd get bigger in the last five minutes? She couldn't tell. She thought so.

"No, I can't do that!" She said. The idea of slamming headfirst into the mesh, after all she'd drank... No. There was no way.

"Come on Cally! You're the betht EVA kid we've got!" Serevens said.

"You're supposed to be looking out for me!" Cally yelled.

"I can look while you run down that wire and win this for us!"

"Really, I can't, I've never done that!" Before she knew it though they were locking her into the harness. It was kind of exciting, Reibek helped her, his hands were a bit careless hoisting her up high enough to be strapped in. She didn't mind, almost getting lost in the moment.

"Viper 214, Short Final, Call the Ball!" The LSO/Pilot screamed. THAT pulled Cally out of the moment and Reibek's careless groping. She shrieked.

"Roger Ball!" Reibek yelled for her and she felt the Pilot fling her down the line. She screamed the whole way down. She didn't remember getting the boot placed. She didn't remember holding on to it. She did remember seeing Reibek and Serevens jumping up and down screaming, reaching up to pull her down. She even remembered, in a really strange detached way puking on Reibek's chest as all of the beer and other various things that had been poured down her throat over the course of the night finally had enough and decided to make an escape.

"I am sooooo sorry Chief," She said as he signed the three of them out of the drunk tank the next day. She held her head, wishing somehow she could take it off and leave it here to die. "This will NEVER happen again." She almost squeeked.

"You're right about that," He said sternly.

"I don't know what got into me, I'm not usually like this, I..."

"Cally what were you thinking?" The Chief asked, looking at her with those eyes that could make even the biggest Weps Tech grovel on the floor. "You guys beat the pilots at hot trap and I wasn't there? I think you guys have found our ace in the hole," He said to Reibek and Serevens. "The next time I'm going to be there to win some of the bet."

"Oh Gods. The next time?" She asked. Her stomach grumbled at the idea of zipping down that line again. She slapped a hand over her mouth and ran for the head.


End file.
